


allowed target

by SilverMoonT



Series: loving control, controlling love [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Time Skip, pining sakusa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-23 09:21:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23009239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverMoonT/pseuds/SilverMoonT
Summary: Disorganized thoughts. Confusing symptoms. Wasted decisions.Sakusa can only wonder, why?
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Series: loving control, controlling love [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1693105
Comments: 8
Kudos: 63





	allowed target

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my best friend for supporting my 24/7 procrastinating agenda, and big shotout to Rie for always being there to cheer me up.

A sigh looks for its exit between Sakusa’s lips.

He knows that during the last days, half of the time he opens his mouth, it’s to allow a sigh to be the only expression of reflection capable of escaping the chains that turn his body and cage into synonyms. He is tired, and can only sigh. Sigh, sigh, and sigh. A long, deep breath. The air traveling up and down his throat —supposedly using his lungs as a home, as a refuge. Sighs are usually motivated by a feeling of sorrow, pain, relief or desire, and besides experiencing the consequences of them every time he isolates himself and avoids crowded places, cleanliness seeming to be the concept behind his actions by being tattooed on his forehead with invisible ink right next to his moles, Sakusa thinks of himself as an expert when it comes to those feelings.

Pain. Yearning. Commotion.

Misery personified in the form of deep dark circles under his eyes, tension on his shoulders and a slight tremor in his hands he manages to make disappear after crossing his arms over his chest, the discomfort in it not vanishing as fast as the trembling of his limbs, fingers already exerting a slight pressure on his muscles. His chest hurts, it questions his thoughts, it allies with them, it goes against them. Sometimes Sakusa wonders if his chest thinks, reflects like his brain, if his heart has a brain equal to his, perhaps smaller or bigger; smaller, he hopes, since he already has enough with his own thoughts, with all the connections and questions he asks himself every day, when he hardly gets up, opens his eyes, and when he is about to fall asleep; to close his eyes but not to rest mentally, just his muscles —sometimes not even his body, the same manifesting itself in the form of bad stretching the next day during practice.

He wonders, he always wonders, when he allowed all this to happen. At what time, day and hour, because he always, always, needs to know all the details, it was that his brain and his heart decided to talk to each other without his consent to form an alliance and thus decide to place themselves against him, armed with feelings with shields and emotions with swords. He keeps thinking, that action being the cause of his bad sleep when he has always been a faithful believer that resting eight hours is an essential part of maintaining a quiet life; a calm life, a concept that now seems to be completely far away from him because from one moment to the other, well, he is still unsure, perhaps from one second to the next, perhaps a month, slowly; or even fast; he is not sure how long, he changed; he is no longer the same, he is aware he is not the same person he used to be.

Again Sakusa lets out a sigh, this time more tired.

He can't keep running away. He is not running away. At least Komori told him that when they spoke recently. "You're weird, you usually face problems by being honest, maybe blunt and rude at times." The words of his best friend continue to resonate in his head, wondering if it's true and if after so many years of friendship, Komori really knows how to read him, scan him from head to toe. Run away? Sakusa wonders, is running away something good or something bad? Sometimes it’s better to stay safe, with doubts and problems, but safe after all, with doors that will always be open, in a constant limbo from which he will never break free. Yet, sometimes it’s better to face the problem, stick the chest out, the chin up and assure: I'm here life, this is me and you won't throw me down, you won't make it. Maybe Komori is right, he has to admit that Komori is right, he is running away, his decision at the moment is to be running away and not because he has to take a few laps on the court as a warm up before training. No, he is running away, leaving because he is afraid.

Fear. Sakusa is tired of being afraid, scared.

Of the sighs he releases because that's how he feels, that's what he feels. Fear.

Afraid that everything will change, that everything will stay the same; Fear of the slightest change. Fear because he is already changing, he has already changed, and will continue to do so no matter what decision he takes on the issue that doesn’t let him sleep, that doesn’t let him spend a minute in peace, wondering about meaningless topics. He is aware, he is more than conscious, that his brain and his way of thinking have already changed; his way of feeling has already changed. He is changing, he’s creating new limits and eliminating old ones, sometimes mixing new versions, and everything while still thinking, without resting, without stopping. His thoughts fly, his fear increases, his heart speeds up, his pulse is a storm of nerves.

A third sigh caresses his mouth.

He can no longer run away. At least for the moment; not after having promised Komori that he wouldn’t. Well, he didn't say it aloud, but Komori's gaze can actually be scary —no one would ever believe him— for what he promised himself to at least try. Because he knows that if he even decided to talk to his best friend, and his best friend to give him advice —try— on the matter, it’s because he is really lost, because his brain studied the concept of perdition from the first letter to the last. He doesn't know what to do anymore and he has no choice but to make decisions without actually taking them, since he only has to cover his eyes with one hand, choose between imaginary options and hope for the best of it —even if his head only gives him the worst of the possibilities. "Don't be pessimistic, Sakusa." Komori tells him. "I'm realistic, not pessimistic, Komori." He replies. It has always been like this.

"Why?" Sakusa asks, finally his mouth functioning for more than sigh.

He doesn’t wait for an answer. Or maybe he does. He meets silence.

He can’t think of answers. Only questions. Just one.

It’s the only question that can really be asked. Why and why. Why now, why not before. Why is it something sudden, that hits without warning and in a surprising way? It's a question, a word, but it's also so much more than that, Sakusa knows it. He knows it by heart, as a school subject created by his own thoughts. Why, he repeats, why and why. Why me? Why him? Why us?

"Why you?" He keeps talking.

Dyed in blond hair, fortunately a different tint from previous years. Silky and soft, Sakusa supposes —he can't say it from personal experience since his instinct and brain are still in a constant fight, pushing and going back, yes and no, no and yes—, but he still assumes it because the hair products he uses are not the only ones that he always sees plaguing the bathroom shelves. Perhaps a little bit ruined by all the times it was bleached over the past few years, but that seems to be free of all imperfection against the bus windows going to a practice match, illuminated by the light of day, even combining with the gilt of the jacket that everyone wear to distinguish themselves as a team, —we are together, we are Black Jackals, look at us, we came to win—. It's funny, Sakusa thinks, it's like the uniform he wears. Not the one he had to use for years, all the jokes that he and Komori had to listen to because apparently green and yellow is not a good combination when you go to a volleyball tournament and expect to be respected. No, the uniform he is currently wearing. Black and gold. Black and yellow, Sakusa is already starting to think more than he should. Black shaved hair becomes dyed blond hair.

"Why you and not someone else?" Sakusa asks again, irritation accompanying his words.

He is angry, upset because where he once saw nothing but brown pupils followed by a comment and a small laugh "Heh, your eyes are brown, you know, like shi—", being interrupted before he can even complete the sentence; now he sees much more than a simple brown, as common as wood, as ordinary as chocolate. He sees firmness and confidence, insecurity and happiness, painted in brown. He sees the first cup of coffee of the morning, the caffeine of the day he needs to survive, sometimes a tea with a stream of milk, a hint of belief. A drug, a substance that alters his mood and makes him experience new sensations.

Dependence. Unwanted collateral effects.

Sakusa heard the phrase "The eyes are the window to the soul." _Not my thing_ , he thinks. The soul is the window to the eyes. Because if you see eyes and feel nothing, free of any emotion and exempt of memories, eyes are just two orbits, one of the five senses, an unknown face. While if you already know the soul, the insecurities and fears that turn it into a cocoon of emotions as well as the curiosities that allow it to become a flower, petals of remorse and leaves of sensations, eyes are not just eyes. They are a spectacle of feelings, an externalization of tears, of happiness and sadness, sometimes of anger as well. Sakusa knows it, from personal experience. Sakusa looks, and it's more than eyes. It’s what allows him to feel that he can touch without having to alter his thoughts, without feeling that his aversion against human contact will torture him by screaming impurity. Since besides, sometimes a look is enough to start a conversation, a dance between two people, a fight between two hearts. A look can convey as much as a landscape. Eyes based on paintings, pupils compared to the blue of the ocean and the green of the forest. Art, right?

"Why? Can you tell me why?" Sakusa frowns. "Why do I feel this itching that doesn’t leave me alone?"

Restless. Imprisoned.

Sakusa knows that he is free. Throughout his volleyball career, his setters have always given him the necessary tosses to allow him to think that he can fly, that he is capable of doing so without the existence of wings on his back for the wind to make his curls dance and the clouds be around him. He’s free because in volleyball he found the answer to get rid of that burden he always feels when he overthinks, because it’s touching the ball for a second, and scoring. Score, score, and keep winning. Because it's worth every time he clenches his hand in a fist after scoring a point. Because winning feels good, it always feels good, but he no longer knows where that heaviness ends. Because he continues playing volleyball, now in a professional way, being part of the pro league, but he is no longer sure of the degree of freedom he has. He has created a prison for him which keys he forgot in some corner of his mind, where no escape plan is enough and there’s no way out. Because he is trapped and it’s his own fault, he presented himself with his hands up saying: "I am guilty, lock me up." But at the same time he wonders, "Am I really the one to blame?" He knows the answer is yes, he knows the answer is no. He is guilty, but he’s not the only one.

"Can you tell me why I think of you? Why are you the one who causes me all this?"

It’s no longer thinking about germs and frowning, it’s thinking about human contact and feeling everything and nothing. Disgust, desire. Curiosity, conformity. Black and white. Yes and no. A single image, one thought is enough to surprise himself so that his head becomes a chaos because the limits that have always existed now must be challenged, are challenged. A wall is destroyed, and a bridge, built? Sakusa doesn’t want to answer, he is afraid; because he wonders, if he has always wanted others to respect his personal space, his barriers, the limits of his body, why doesn't he want that now? Why? The only thing that is asked.

Because every barrier is blurred, and touching glass with the tip of his finger will be enough for everything to be shattered, for every single piece to fall and new obstacles to be built, based on new thoughts he never had before. He is afraid and aware of the same, it’s his fault but it’s not. Because if there are limits, it’s for them to separate him from something, from someone else, from another person, from someone different. Because he no longer knows what is right and what is wrong, or why there’s a difference between the two. Bad people doing good things, good people doing bad things. No one is purely good and nobody is purely bad. He doesn’t know what the notion of right and wrong is. What is to run away? Something good or something bad? Why should it be categorized?

Why can't there be, exist, more than two options?

Why?

Why is the only thing Sakusa can ask.

Because he can no longer make decisions without wondering why, questioning everything that exists, all the way of small elections that leads to the final decision, the result that will follow him for the rest of the day. Because he doesn’t trust his thoughts that constantly push him to continue imagining, to create images in his mind that were never real thanks to the limits already created. "Don’t touch me." Again and again, "Stay away from me." Every day, every practice. Because there must always be some thought behind every decision, or is it a decision behind a thought? Isn’t a decision a thought?

Sakusa shakes his head, arms still crossed over his chest.

It hurts.

Confusion. Chaos. Lost. Repeat.

Confusion. Chaos. Lost.

Repeat.

"Why now?" He asks, defeated.

Where others see arrogance, he sees confidence.

Because arrogance is equal to vanity and vanity is the excessive belief in one's abilities, an exaggerated expression of pride; while confidence is believing to be capable, having what it takes to achieve whatever is proposed. It’s determination, and Sakusa feels that same determination every time a ball is lifted for him. In each practice, in each practice match, in each official match. He remembers it from the All-Japan Youth Training Camp, but now he can feel it. It’s the hunger to always look for more, to never be satisfied, to want, desire, improve, and achieve. It’s a process, a cycle of personal improvement. It’s a constant push and never give up regardless of whether the base is solid and strong.

Where Sakusa used to see a burden and rolled his eyes, now he sees confidence and falls in love.

Sakusa bites his lower lip.

Love. He thinks of it as something funny as it can be defined as the best and the worst.

Fall and love, interesting combination.

Throughout his high school life he had to hear "green and yellow?" followed by a grimace or a laugh, but when people talk about falling in love, nobody adds a comment. Fall and love, strange. Weird, because it actually makes sense. When you are falling and desperately moving your hands to try to hold onto something, you have no control, control has you; and if you fall in love, you become a control's puppet. Falling in love is giving up control and getting control in return. _'I leave my heart in your hands. Take care of it. Don’t play with it, don’t break it.'_

_'Please.'_

What is love? He doesn't want to think about it, he really doesn't want to think about it.

When he hears players say: "I love volleyball, volleyball is my love." he wonders if he also loves volleyball, if he knows what it is to love, enough to be able to express the same for that sport that has always accompanied him and that it’s still part of his life, an activity he never wants to leave. That's love? Never want to let go? But isn’t that selfish when people are added to the sentence? Or is that what love is? Love to the point of wanting to keep someone, of only wanting a single person? Sometimes more than one. "If you love, let go." Sakusa has heard more than once in a background movie. But isn’t love wanting to improve for that person to never leave, to stay? Be the best version of yourself so that person wants to shut the door and don’t leave the room? Sakusa doesn’t want to think, he doesn’t believe he has the capacity to wonder what love is when he doesn’t even want to think about why he is thinking what love is.

Why?

He clicks his tongue, tired of that question.

Tired of everything. Of asking questions without answers and of speaking without understanding himself, of exposing his thoughts out loud, at that time, hoping for the best, not wishing for the worst, his head anyway providing him with the worst possible consequences. Questioning himself is easy, asking for his own opinion, for his way of thinking. He is confused, very confused —what do I want, what do I expect, what do I desire— he always asks himself, some thoughts repeating when he gathers those words to form invasive questions. He is beginning to be the servant of a pattern he is not sure is of his liking because he is never sure of anything and now much less. Facemask, disinfectant. Not everything can be erased with it, he needs more than cleaning products to get rid of the itching that doesn’t let him sleep at night, that makes him dream during the day, with his eyes open. Because he is no longer sure of wanting to erase, of wanting to get away.

Distance. Loneliness. Void.

Concepts he knows from top to bottom, concepts he may want to change.

Because as the day transforms into night and night into day, and the world changes, the months go by and the years pass, his own being takes different versions in the form of decisions, thoughts and choices. Because one day he is safe and the next day he is not. Because one day he wants to stay away, and the next day he wants to take another step. Because a second he’s thinking of hiding under his sheets and not leaving anymore, as if they could protect him as his mother had told him as a child, but when the needle moves, the numbers change and the second passes, he only wants to open the door of his room and find out. Quench the hunger he has, which has awakened within him. Staying still is impossible and he doesn’t want to, he wants to move and find out, even turn the images in his head into something real.

"Why am I a mess?"

Sakusa is surprised. Disaster and him in the same sentence. He thought the day would never come.

Perhaps, in reality his name has always been written followed by the word "mess".

He considers it an irony. He being a disaster and his obsession with keeping everything under control. There are times when he wonders if there’s the possibility of him being the embodiment of duality since he makes decisions that affect him both in good and bad way. Stay. Walk away. All day, all night, all the time, a constant hide-and-seek. He doesn’t know what to choose, but if he decides not to run away and accept reality, then he will be honest no matter what.

He is a disaster, his thoughts are not consistent. His pulse accelerates, his cheeks have a red hue, the palms of his hands sweat, his stomach hurts, the tips of his ears are accompanied by a pink color, and his pupils expand, the black of them being the darkness itself. Because he doesn’t know if he is sick or he’s only imagining it, if what he feels are symptoms or a creation of his head. Because sometimes he feels that love is like a disease, a virus that he doesn’t want to be part of under any circumstances, but anyway what he wants doesn’t matter because it’s not up to him to decide. Because perhaps it’s true that he doesn’t know what love is and so he associates it with concepts that he does know. Germs. Diseases. Cleanliness. Is love a cleansing, a purification that cheers the soul, or a disease that alters the heart to the point of breaking it? Love is a mess, and so is him.

It’s difficult to breathe. Control. A critical moment.

Sakusa can only wonder why.

Now instead of washing his hands as soon as he finds himself in the bathroom, he observes them, wondering what it would be like to intertwine his fingers with someone else's, the panic of the germs involved in that action being collapsed by the doubt that the emotions around it can provide. Because while he is mixing his black curls with all the hair products he uses, sometimes his gaze is directed towards hair products that don’t belong to him, asking himself how it would feel to run his fingers through blond, light strands. Because by caressing his own skin with the creams he has, the moves of his hands begin to be unconscious at the same time that his head begins to form a series of questions and, what if someone else did it? What if it wasn't me? Because when he gets under the sheets, he looks at the empty space around him instead of just closing his eyes.

Stop. Break. Shout.

Ask.

"What are you doing with me?"

Where others see a perfect, free of any flaw smile, Sakusa sees insecurities.

A person as human as him, composed of mistakes and successes. Everyone has the permission to cry sometimes, to sometimes leave aside the most deceiving, beautiful smile; more striking because everyone stares, without questioning what kind of memories are behind it. Being selfish is the same as thinking about oneself when one's well-being should be the main concern, the first priority. Sakusa allows the ghost of a laugh to leave his lips —finally, not a sigh. Priorities, he no longer knows what his are.

When they bump into each other in the morning, both getting up early because they have their own beauty routines that include keeping their hair in perfect condition, Sakusa no longer rushes to get to the bathroom first. He stays, listening to a mumbling apology he’s not sure he wants to keep listening, since the other believes he has ruined his day by almost bumping into him just because they were both heading towards the same door. When they walk side by side, Sakusa no longer controls the amount of centimeters between them, he doesn’t use an imaginary rule to maintain distance. Instead, he wonders what would happen if he eliminated those centimeters that had soon begun to become millimeters. After all, they are both wearing clothes, right? When after a wonderful play, a well-made pass that has ended on point, Sakusa no longer thinks of only closing his hand in a fist, his personal mark since he has memory and considers the court as his home. He imagines what it would be like to be part of the pile, of the rest of the players both on his side and on the other side of the net, high-fiving each other because volleyball is playing as a team, winning and losing all together. When his smirk meets an equally playful smirk, his thoughts no longer stop there. His brain continues to function, his brain cells working, promptly giving him images of what it would be like to join both smiles.

Sakusa looks at him. Just looks at him and stays silent.

The generation of monsters they call them. Sakusa always listens to the concept when they are about to play a game. And he wonders, why? A monster is a being that moves away from the regular order of nature, generally presenting negative characteristics along with a fearsome appearance, so he assumes that they are nicknamed with that noun because they are beasts that within the court show their determination and hunger to win through great receptions, magnificent passes, dazzling points, and perfect plays. Because they don't need fangs, horns, or unusual appearances to be defined as monsters; as people willing to do anything, never satisfied and always looking to improve. But out of court, what does it mean to be a monster?

Sakusa looks at him.

To his other self in the mirror. He looks at himself, and wonders what he has become.

Is he a monster? An alter ego? He no longer recognizes himself.

Komori had told him that talking to Atsumu was what he should do to stop asking the same question, now both in his head and out loud. Why?

He is afraid of himself, he is afraid of everything that Atsumu provokes and makes him think. He is afraid to think if he is obsessed, or worse, he is in love. Komori told him to stop running away and he decided to listen to him, deciding to face his own self, speaking to himself as well as reciting all the questions he wants to ask Atsumu.

Why you? Why Atsumu, why himself? Why if they are like light and dark, then he feels that it’s possible to be attracted because day and night are for each other instead of two separate phenomena? Why him and not someone else? Why him and Atsumu? Why is this not happening to someone else instead of him? Why? Can you tell me why? He asks himself, why are you the one who causes me all of this? He questions, blaming both Atsumu and himself. Atsumu because he is the person who stars in all his doubts, the person that keeps a firm grip around the strings of his thoughts. He himself because he lets his own brain contemplate so many images instead of slowing it down, saying enough and shutting it up. He had promised Komori that he wouldn't run away, so he wonders again, why am I a disaster? He asks his image in the mirror, what are you doing with me?

Why?

Why does he decide to ask all those questions out loud, to himself, instead of Atsumu?

Because he is afraid of the meaning behind his sighs and his words, his questions and his thoughts. Because he is not sure he knows what love is but the meaning of madness, obsession, confusion. Because being lost means finding no way out and that is how he feels, imprisoned, looking around without finding any door that allows him to get out of his own confusion. Because he wonders, isn’t love and confusion the same? How different are a disease and love if both have symptoms and results? His face growing warm, his hands shaking, confusing thoughts. Isn’t it the same? Because he’s sure at the time of asking all those questions out loud, facing himself, facing the person in front of him, of curls as black as the pupils of his eyes, with two moles decorating his forehead, because as well as once he accepted that crowds cause him panic as well as germs rejection, now he accepts that thinking about Atsumu is the same as being scared because his head teaches him that there is a whole new world to discover; a place where his heart beats for different circumstances and his mind works for images that must still become real. Borders are confusing and Sakusa knows it. Sakusa knows it.

Disorganized thoughts. Confusing symptoms. Wasted decisions.

Sakusa can only wonder, why?

He wants to hit the mirror, get rid of all the emotions that haunt him and turn him into their prey. He doesn't care if what ends up suffering the consequences of his indecision is his hand, his knuckles against the glass. That's how crazy he feels he is, ashamed of himself. Thinking a lot, thinking little. Being irrational — welcome to the madness — he thinks, he sings. He wants crystals to draw the different versions that have been created of himself. He wish he had more time to think, but at the same time he’s glad that the minutes have already been lost, whether or not the minutes he has just spent fighting himself were a waste of time. He has a training to attend, new thoughts to face and a smile and eyes to look forward to not being too obvious, or perhaps yes. Who knows at this point.

He opens one of the shelves and hitches the facemask behind his ears. Truths, smiles, and grimaces hidden behind the texture of it.

It's ironic, he thinks. Being called a monster by his elementary classmates for being different, for not being part of the pile and preferring to keep his hands in his jacket pockets instead of hugging others. Funny, he keeps thinking. He is still a monster for having the luxury of sharing uniform and team with Bokuto, Hinata, Atsumu. Monsters are supposed to hide under the beds, not appear during the day on a volleyball court. Concepts hurt depending on others and oneself, Sakusa thinks. Maybe he is a monster and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Some matches are the definition of hell and scoring points sometimes feels like heaven, but instead of angels and demons, they are monsters because they are still on earth. _"Nice kill."_ They always express. Monsters, who else would say something like that for a simple point?

Sakusa looks at himself in the mirror one last time.

Skin. Secrets. Attention.

Again the routine begins. A new day, different thoughts, other images.

With the only difference that now the same question and the same name is everywhere.

Chasing him. Getting closer.

Stay away. Stay close to me.

Why?

Why Atsumu, why?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
